Opening Shot Project

The Opening Shot Project run by Jim Emerson at Scanners is an insightful and diadactic form of criticism, combining formal analysis and collaborative work.
It introduces formal considerations to what film commentary should be, in a simple way, because it focuses on a short bit that we easily grasp in our mind and one that is particularly significant to the whole film. As Jim says, the first image on the screen defines our symbolic connection with the meaning developped in the rest of the film.
Secondly, the collective participation opened to readers, so various viewers propose a new opening shot with their own personality, which blurs the institutional line between the unilateral critic's stance and the readers feedback.
Both aspects, formal criticism and collective criticism should be developped online more frequently in my opinion to take best advantage of online interaction and insights.

I especially like acquarello's essays at Strictly Film School because he pays particular attention to describe the opening sequence of each film. Thus we can picture the atmosphere of a film we haven't seen, and really get in the mood the auteur establishes which is important to best relate to his later film analysis.
And I like to do that as well when I review a film. This is a very good exercice. Giving a sneak-peak at the opening shot is more instructive and more pertinent than the random shuffle of a trailer montage.

At the reading of the analysis of Femme Fatale's opening shot, by Dennis Cozzalio and Jim Emerson, a film I haven't seen, I was inspired to try a little informal psychoanalytical reading of the first images :

Layered from back to front : TV subject, mirror reflection, protagonist, real-life audience (us viewers), there are so many symbols at work in the TV bit alone, if we consider the order of screen apparition, paying particular attention to their nature and their significance.

The update of the femme fatale icon, as Jim points out, is also from B&W to color, an aesthetic leap, not only in fashion style. At the same time a nostalgic look back on the past, and a confrontation of two cinema ages, through the most possible violent comparison : superimposition. Giving the edge to the glossy color image of course. The old TV texture undermines even more the B&W image. It's like a comparative test : Color v. B&W

The nudity evoked by Denis further biases this shock of eras, we get more flesh now, but the expression of erotism is different though, and one would say trivialized, corrupted by showing off too much while underplaying the power of suggestive/restrained fantasy. And the male figure rudely switching off TV, like a parental punishment, terminates this uneven rivalery. One was textured by TV screen lines pattern, the other was semi-transparent.

The present wins, the past is shut out, but it's more like an imposed wake up call to suppress our complacent nostalgia. De Palma doesn't necessarily reveal his preference. On the contrary, this is such a humble, cinephile move for De Palma to open his own movie with somebody else's movie. Maybe De Palma pounders over the commodification of great Classics in video forms, or how the whole Production Code aesthetic vanished away, or just a homage to Billy Wilder.

Then there is the multilayered apparition of the protagonist by progressive stages.

First we see the object of veneration, full screen. And the anachronistic reflection enters the frame to deny the original diegesis (Double Indemnity), literally upstaging Stanwyck. Now the image of the voyeur is revealed to the audience made self-conscious. Like if a spotlight was directed on the spectator in the dark theatre, showing up our anonymous presence on the silver screen like on a mirroring window. The TV screen stands for the peeping window of voyeurism.

The TV set is also a mirror, physically, because De Palma uses it to film the face of his actress while she's turning her back to us. It is symbolically also because the viewer-voyeur, looks into the screen and wants to see his/her own reflection on the screen, meaning IN the movie. And this clever mise-en-scene achieves just that, the viewer and the star are side by side on the screen.

So that's a dialogue with the audience, a welknown feeling shared by a cinephile. The unidentified protagonist is like us, an audience within this fiction. Calling for a deeper identification with her.
Moving on to a deeper layer, we assume the protagonist's point of view. The girl watches a mythical icon and her reflection merges into her. The mirror image materializes this unconscious process of identification ("transference" in freudian term), like a ghost double of herself projected outside her body to rub off a little against the screen, and maybe become a movie star too. Which actually happens with the introduction of the real protagonist, pushing back Barbara Stanwyck to backdrop layer.

There is probably a more complex message about screen feminity nested there by De Palma. I don't know the narrative connection between Double Indemnity and Femme Fatale, so I can't figure the thematic purpose.

The reality check of the TV set and the subtitles continue to remove the viewer from the screen world. A trick meant to accentuate the reality of this hereby fiction (Femme Fatale), by contrast to another fiction film (Double Indemnity) turned into a mere video playing on TV and switched off abruptly. The nudity uncovered as the shot widens makes us more and more interested in the color diegesis.
Perverse manipulation to install the proverbial suspension of disbelief. Now we are ready to forget we are watching a movie, because the "movie" was on that TV, now what's happening is reality and we're in it!

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Obviously, watching the film entirely and knowing the substance of the content would help to inform this formal analysis with more pertinence, but as a technical exercice, I thought it was amusing to look into the structure itself alone.

Cinema is dead... on radio

Le cinéma l'après-midi, The rendez-vous of Filmmakers radio show, cancelled on France Culture!

listen here (available online for a week, in French)

France Culture is a public network, heavy on highbrow culture (philosophy, art, history, psychology, religion...), a haven for quality content, and yet put an end to 3 years of the best panel discussion on cinema... A radio show, hosted by Claire Vassé, I only discovered in 2005, and is not even archived online. It was my weekly fix for serious film talk, cinema reflexion, pertinent questioning, profound insights, and insider perspectives of certain filmmakers on the films of other filmmakers. I got more substance out of these informal verbal chattering between auteurs than from any formal print critics! Filmmakers aren't always very comfortable talking about their own films, but their passion shines when they reveal their vision of cinema through their commentary, the expression of their experience of films that are not theirs.

• The discussion begins with a clip from Renoir's Une Partie de Campagne, selected by Marie Vermillard. The scene of the girl sharing with her mother about her blooming desir and her growing passion for grass, water, insects like an overwhelming sensation that makes her want to cry. Summarized in this scene, cinema is life.
• Marie Vermillard cites Fernando Pessoa on the regard (Caeiro) : "I am at the size of what I see", a reflexion closely relevant to the experience of cinema, before the big screen, facing the dimension of the frames
• Pascal Bonitzer cites Eisenstein : "The close up of a cockroach is more impressive than a wide shot of hundred elephants" traducing the plastic emotionality of filmic framing.
• Brigitte Rouan is annoyed by the poor format of French cinema this year, trivial, she wants a more radical cinema like Desplechin. She regrets the disappearing of this space of resistance (the radio show) that championned obscur filmmakers like Stephen Dwoskin.
• Catherine Breillat : Man is an animal with naked skin and speech. The body language, the language of silence, of regard, of flesh.
• Philippe Le Guay cites Deleuze : "The decomposition of cristal, process of decomposition of the image by Visconti"
  Philosophers teach us how to read images we make. We believe we know our images, and they are re-interpretated by someone else.
  This radio broadcast was a place to re-invent images. Our opinion on a film doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if we like Visconti or not. Shift of appropriation. To change our point of view through speech is what makes cinema important, something to talk about.
• Khalil Joreige : Cinema is a place of thought. It's not a matter of taste, but a field of exploration that has to do with our existence and our approach.
• Catherine Breillat : Cinema is the place for the discovery of the world. Cinema is a metamorphosis of human thought becoming concrete. Place of work and human conscience.
• Brigitte Roüan says the feedback of the audience who amplify a film through their own words, an perspective the filmmaker couldn't even imagine, is emotionaly moving her to tears sometimes.
• Philippe Grandrieux proposes a clip from the opening of Dreyer's Ordet. The word can ressurect life, something becomes possible when the speech is pronounced and heard. The sound of the father calling his son, and the sound of the animals (reminder/vertigo of animality). The great question of cinema is its capacity to make us feel we are alive.
  This radio broadcast was important to put together filmmakers who are not meant to face eachother and talk about other films, and their own relationship to cinema.
• Emmanuel Mouret : "Cinema does resurrect life. Cinema IS life, not aside of life. Often we say reality inspires cinema, but cinema is also there to inspires reality"
• Dominique Cabrera cites "Pierre-Auguste Renoir, mon père" book by Jean Renoir. The paintor fought the motif, he painted nude bodies, and found himself in this nudity.
  The sexual desire to film a body, a face, weaving a life pulsion with the director's personal history.
• Philippe Le Guay cites Ophüls "The greatest quality of cinema is vitality" because vitality cannot be enclosed in an idea.
• Philippe Grandrieux : What matters is the nature and the origin of the "gesture" of the artist. A director doesn't frame his shots with the eyes, but from within, something inside, in order to see something, to mean something. Beauty for itself is grotesque, the quality of a merchandise.

Sad day for thought-provoking Film Discussion, as listening to filmmakers talking about their art is too rare and precious...

Criticism/Creation mix at Cahiers

As cited in my previous post Bazin described a phenomenon characteristic of the Cahiers tradition : a constant interconnection between critical thinking on cinema and its effective practice. Ever since its genesis, the editorial board of Les Cahiers du Cinéma developed a particular proximity with filmmaking, often critics doing the leap and directing their own films after analysing so many of their masters.

"Nonetheless, after defining the independence of creation from criticism, a new phenomenon should be mentioned, the growing dependency of criticism from creation.The birth of criticism at the silent era was tightly bound to creation : Canudo, Delluc, L'Herbier, Dulac, Gance, Epstein, Tedesco... are both filmmakers and theoreticians. Critical reflection and creation were interdependent. (...)
In France, this new generation of young intellectuals [Politique des auteurs] with a conscious vocation and envy to make cinema, believe knowledge and reflection of cinema is no longer at the studio or internship on set, but at the Cinémathèque and by the practice of film criticism."
André Bazin (Reflexions sur la critique, 1958)

I've compiled a non-exhaustive list of Cahiers critics who turned filmmaker to illustrate this interesting fact. Some continued to write in Les Cahiers during their filmmaking career, some came back to criticism for good, others proved they were capable filmmakers with so much talent they entered the pantheon of cinema history.

Film critics who make films

Cahiers precursors : Theoretician-Filmmaker

• Robert Bresson (14 films/17 scenarii/0 performances) "Objectif 49"
• Jean Cocteau (10/42/12) "Objectif 49"
• Alexandre Astruc (19/17/4) "Objectif 49"

Cahiers contributors : Critic-Filmmaker

• Jean-Luc Godard (88 films/73 scenarii/34 performances) "Jeune Turc"
• Claude Chabrol (67/51/48) "Jeune Turc"
• Chris Marker (42/32/0)
• Eric Rohmer (51/34/9) "Jeune Turc"
• Wim Wenders (46/31/20) Special Issue Editor
• Luc Moullet (32/19/27)
• Jacques Rivette (31/23/7) "Jeune Turc"
• François Truffaut (26/34/14) "Jeune Turc"
• Jacques Doniol-Valcroze (21/27/17) Founder
• André Techiné (21/24/2)
• Marguerite Duras (19/48/8) Special Issue Editor
• Olivier Assayas (19/23/2)
• Jean-Louis Comolli (19/20/4) "Moderniste"
• André S. Labarthe (19/5/17)
• Jean André Fieschi (17/2/2) "Moderniste"
• Jean Eustache (12/5/8)
• Jean-Pierre Limosin (12/5/2)
• Jean Douchet (11/21/4)
• Danièle Dubroux (10/10/10)
• Jean-Claude Biette (9/7/10)
• Léos Carax (7/6/4)
• Serge Le Peron (6/4/2)
• Louis Skorecki (6/2/1)
• Alain Bergala (5/4/1)
• Pascal Bonitzer (5/44/26)
• Christophe Honoré (5/8/0)
• Thierry Jousse (4/4/4)
• François Weyergans (3/1/1)
• Serge Toubiana (2/1/2)
• Alain Philippon (2/0/0)
• Nicolas Saada (1/6/1)
• Philippe Sollers (1/5/3)
• Marc Chevrie (1/1/0)
• Michel Chion (1/1/0)
• Jean Narboni (1/0/7)
• Vincent Ostria (1/0/1)
• Yann Lardeau (1/0/1)

-- Approximate number of (films directed/scenarii/performances) for a partial selection of Cahiers critics, taken from IMDb for information (complementary infos/corrections welcomed).

Bazin on criticism - 1958

Reflexions sur la critique / Reflections on criticism

Following to my previous post on his preliminary essay on criticism, Pour une critique cinématographique (1943) -- which didn't provoke much commentary, sadly -- here is an essay he wrote shortly before dying, aged 40, at the end of 1958 -- 48 years ago -- and published in Cinéma 58 n°32, which concludes his career of film critic. He animated Ciné-Clubs (which he considered to be a form of criticism), and worked for big circulation daily newspapers, weeklies or specialized magazines (Cahiers du Cinéma) during 15 years, a decisive period for film criticism in France and in history. He looks back on how print criticism has evolved since he started, the state of criticism and its practice, with an extraordinary lucidity.

(my rough paraphrased translation. The titles are Bazin's)

I - De l'inefficacité de la critique / About criticism inefficiency

Cinematographic criticism is almost useless to the commercial success of a film.

"More and more, advertising uses criticism, although one couldn't say this borrowing and citation pays homage to its efficiency. Firstly because these skilfully truncated quotes are always favourable to the film, even when the article was harrowing, secondly because they prove by contrast the direct impotency of criticism, which becomes efficient when promoted by advertisement."

The impact of criticism on the total commercial run of a film is quasi-null. Even an unanimous critical acclaim, at festival for instance, cannot attract enough audience to extend its run.
However Bazin confesses his satisfaction of criticism powerlessness because the disproportionate and arguable responsibility on the success/failure of a film (like it is most common with an almighty theatre criticism) frightens him.

"I don't see what moral authority, or what intellectual grace would grant to the critic the monstrous privilege to decide the fate of artworks he doesn't like. Ideally we could help efficiently the ones we like, and we would have little influence on the others; but since the two are linked, I still prefer quasi-inefficiency to an abusive power."

II - Inutile mais nécessaire / Useless but necessary

However cinema cannot do without criticism, in spite of its uselessness.

"Chaplin, Griffith, Murnau, Stroheim, Dreyer would have existed anyway, with or without criticism : they wouldn't have changed a single plan in their films. (...)

This parasite vegetation [criticism] on the majestic tree [creation] maintains a symbiotic relationship, with hindsight, not necessarily meaningful to growth but to blissful ageing"

"Criticism is two-faced : one toward the film, which is worthless commercially, the other toward the audience, which justifies its existence. (...)

Had I revealed the cinematographic truth to 10 stray readers only, one even, my duty of critic would be justified. Back in the thrilling days when I could practice oral criticism of workshops and ciné-clubs, the superior delight it gave me over the print criticism laid in this immediate sentiment, physical, directly human, that intellectual analysis resulted on a genuine conversion. How many times have I been approached on my way out by spectators (usually over 40 years old) who meant to tell me they were unable to judge the validity of my analysis of the film, but that it revealed to them that cinema existed, was truly an art, and they believed in it now. (...)

Believe me if you like, these results matter much more than a 10% increase of the influence of print criticism on weekend gross"

Bazin wishes quality would become quantity too on the long run... nearly 50 years ago! The spread of arthouses, replacing the ciné-clubs. Post-war criticism of a greater quality, the actions of La cinémathèque and ciné-clubs, the popular cultural movements are the factors of a complex phenomenon leading to form a specialized cinema audience for a decade (then).

"If criticism is the conscience of cinema, cinema owes to criticism its self-consciousness."

"The concern for style, shaping up thoughts, promote film criticism as a literary genre, which wasn't true before WW2. (...)

We know concerns for effect and style lead sometimes French criticism to disputable excess (often caused by juvenility). But these are the flaws of a new and fundamental quality, which for the first time places film criticism on par with traditional criticism."

III - La critique et la création / Criticism and creation

If criticism is unable to influence a film commercially, then does it influence filmmakers who read it?

"The presumption would be even more intolerable to teach the maker how to do his job (only the like of Baudelaire or Valéry could). The creator expects little from criticism, due to the profound psychology of creation. The critic commences from the result, from the finished work. His mission isn't so much to "explain" it but to illuminate its significance (or meanings more exactly) in the conscience and mind of the reader.

Some bring forth the silly objection that critics find thousands wonderful intentions that the auteur never contemplated. For instance one "sublime" mise-en-scène idea that was in fact originated by a technical incident. If the final work was limited to the sum of the artist's conscious intentions it wouldn't worth much. The quality and depth of an artwork can be measured by the gap between what the auteur meant to put in it and what it actually contains. (Of all arts, cinema is the one that by nature leaves the largest part to chance). Besides, the purpose of criticism isn't to track back the psychological process of creation (operation more uncertain than the most arbitrary aesthetic sketch), but to help nurture its reader intellectually, morally and in his/her sensibility in relationship with the artwork.

Whichever critical method is worthless if not controlled, limited, corrected by this specific quality judging the critic ultimately : taste. A quality, obviously hard to define, that only could distinguish a theoretical hallucination from an acceptable elaboration. Those who lack critical sense and distance, the bad impressionistic criticism, which facile irony only equals its incompetence, make up the free-for-all of criticism. (...)

Nonetheless, after defining the independence of creation from criticism, a new phenomenon should be mentioned, the growing dependency of criticism from creation.The birth of criticism at the silent era was tightly bound to creation : Canudo, Delluc, L'Herbier, Dulac, Gance, Epstein, Tedesco... are both filmmakers and theoreticians. Critical reflection and creation were interdependent.
French critics of the talky era, from 1930 to 1950, mark however a quasi-absence of mix between the industry and what is written about it. A counter-example in the UK (Gavin Lambert, Lindsay Anderson and the team of Sight & Sound) or in Italy (the Experimental Centre from the fascist era) proves critics often cross the line between criticism and filmmaking. Meanwhile, non-critic filmmakers always dialogue with critics. [See: critique/creation mix]
However I'm rather sceptical about the fertility of such exchanges.

In France, this new generation of young intellectuals with a conscious vocation and envy to make cinema, believe knowledge and reflection of cinema is no longer at the studio or internship on set, but at the Cinémathèque and by the practice of film criticism. Thus the partiality, the polemic and militant character of these young critics. Naturally, this is a passionate criticism made of virtual creators. Objectivity is not a goal. Taking side in art is legitimate when backed up by intelligence, taste and talent. Of course these critics are narrow-minded, unjust... but the narrow angle of reflection often penetrates deeper in the intelligence of its object than objective criticism.
Hitchcockism or Bergmanism will remain strategical operations of criticism that nurtured the history of cinematographic reflection. Even though I don't believe in "La Politique des Auteurs" personally. But there is no absolute error in Art. Truth of criticism isn't defined by whatever objective and measurable exactitude, but by the intellectual excitation triggered inside the reader : its quality and amplitude.

The function of the critic isn't to bring an inexistent truth on a silver plater, but to further as far as possible, through intelligence and sensibility of readers, the impact of a work of art."

What do you think about Bazin's analysis and its relevance in today's critical debate?

INA - Public French TV archive online

National Archive Insitute (INA) opened to public use a part of their methodical archive of all things TV and radio broadcast since the 70ies, and put it on the internet a couple of weeks ago with a stunning success (jam and troubleshooting possible).
It's only small clips and nothing recent yet (full access will cost fees), but I found a bunch of great TV moments.

For example these are the hits for Robert Bresson (in French, obviously) :

• 1958 - Maria Casarès on Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne
• 1962 - Bresson interviewed after Le Procès de Jeanne d'Arc was awarded the Cannes Special Jury Prize
• 1966 - Interview of Bresson in Venice for Au Hasard Balthazar
• 1966 - Annie Dorfman producer of Le Procès de Jeanne d'Arc, talks about its commercial failure
• 1966 - Annie Dorfman talks about producing Pickpocket : she says Bresson doesn't let producers interfer in the pursuit of his oeuvre
• 1966 - Louis Malle on Bresson's non-actors
• 1966 - Ghislain Cloquet, DP on Balthazar, talks about the unity/flow /coherence given by a sole 50mm lens for every plan
• 1966 - Godard, Duras, Malle, Reichenbach talk about Au Hazard Balthazar
• 1967 - Godard in Cannes repeat exactly what he said in clip above about Bresson (inquisitor), but in pejorative terms (racist, intolerant) because Bresson supported the censorship Rivette's La Religieuse earlier the same year
• 1967 - Interviews of his models on location during shooting of Mouchette
• 1970 - Dominique Sanda on Une Femme Douce
• 1971 - Dominique Sanda, 20, on Bresson
• 1974 - Bresson press conference for Lancelot in Cannes, defends furiously his cinematographe against the mascarade/disguised parade of commercial cinema (pornography). Disses Dreyer's period costumes for Jeanne d'Arc. The gore opening sequence was meant to show the violent menace of the epoch, but before the film, to keep the core of the film free of representative violence. Disses Resnais period film Stavisky
• 1981 - Truffaut on Bresson
• 1983 - L'argent in Cannes, booed by the public and praised by the critics
• 1985 - Jean Yanne, producer on Lancelot, talks about how Bresson spent 24h on recording the sound of a poker on the ground
• 1987 - Dominique Sanda on Une Femme Douce

Maybe some of them are already featured on DVD bonus tracks, but I wouldn't know because I don't have the DVDs.

More updates later with other findings...

2:37 (2006/Thalluri)

Two thirty 7 (2006/Murali K. Thalluri/Australia) +++

Opening Sequence : Very photogenic shot by a nonchalant camera flying unsteady in the tree leaves as if in the weightlessness of a breeze (overexposition of the sky, translucent leaves, calm, out of time, flowing motion always looking upward). The title appears superimposed like a digital clock for a second (2 :37), marking the exact time of one teenager's death. (This poetical motif will come back in the end, from a different perspective, to loop back the long flashback with the current time of the opening sequence)
Cut (from what was the courtyard of a well to do suburban high school) to the bathrooms. A girl is crying over her own problems when her attention is drawn to a closed door with suspicious noises. Some blood leaks out. After banging and alerting everyone, the door is opened to the horror of reaction shots. We don't see who is dead, and that's the mystery we'll have to figure out until the end.

High school flick is a known territory, especially in TV serial drama, but this exercice in style mixes many genres together to elaborate the complex storytelling of an artfilm. The sensationalist climax breaks in upfront. We know one of the seven students we follow this morning will commit suicide, but who? A varied selection of typical profiles (nerd, jock, teacher's pet, barbie dolls, gay, everyone's friend, laughingstock) that represent social personalities found in today's classrooms.

The students talk about their hopes and issues with life, school and family through talking-head interviews by an off-screen silent journalist, on a glossy black & white camera. Interspreced along the non-linear exposure of several viewpoints of the same events taking place that morning, they really develop the ambiguity of teen's self-centered realities. The B&W documentary image and the interview mode suggest a TV "making-of" filmed after the suicide for the news, which is the equivalent of the classic police interrogation of usual suspects in a more conventional genre. A touch of realism meant to accentuate the dramatization of this fiction based on a true story. It's particularly interesting to notice the obvious discrepencies between the public persona they try hard to portray, proud and optimistic, in these confessional interviews and the painful burden they carry secretly everywhere they go in the school scenes.

Taken in the very footsteps of teenagers along one tough day of their lives, a series of long plan sequences across the school corridors are consciously borrowed from Gus Van Sant's Elephant. The film is openly referenced in one line when Marcus and his English teacher talk about a Columbine-like school massacre. The same types of mini-episodes following one protagonist at the time, and then revisiting the same events from the perspective of another person present. Tracking shots mapping a comprehensive perception of every events from every perspective. The formalist "remake" is deliberate, fully appropriated in a personal and creative way, adaptated to a more mainstream story. Which denotes a confident talent for this debut director only aged 21 during production! This is unbelievable. A strong acting direction and a not so easy mise-en-scène that many experienced directors hardly manage.

One minor quibble though regarding the lengthy and explicit suicide scene coming up as the final revelation, that displays too much of the suggestive horror that defined the wise self-restraint atmosphere up to that point. The overtly gore and melodramatic scene isn't interesting in itself and to keep it unseen, elliptical or symbolic would convey a much more chilling feeling.

This "who is the victim?" mind game set up by the timeline inversion and withdrawal of a key information is a clever twist that introduces each of the seven protagonists as a potential "dead man walking". The potrayal of common troubles (unwanted pregnancy, homosexuality, drug abuse, anorexia, solitude, misunderstanding) makes you believe each one hides a valid motive. Maybe what they go through will lead to a dead end.

In the light of this dreadful outcome we are invited to observe carefully how they deal with their intimate problems and to pay particular attention to the point of no return when they would commit the ultimate mistake.

The film emphasizes that suicide is incomprehensible and that every adolescent may face suicidal tendencies. Even after examination of all the actions leading up to taking one's own life, it's difficult to know if someone could have noticed and help change the course of events. Maybe just a small gesture, a kind word would have made a difference. Maybe nothing at that point would have removed the resolve. The other protagonists' resilence will most likely overcome adversity, which offers a more hopeful sight.

Selected in Cannes 2006 - Un Certain Regard

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• Official Website